Wednesday, 28 November 2012

Here it is, the second part of my article for Elephant
Journal on Post-Traditional Buddhism; a term/concept I borrowed from Hokai
Sobol, an intelligent Shingon teacher. The article actually covers a few
thoughts on what a new shape of Buddhism might include as part of its emerging
form. Again, I’m no expert, just exploring thoughts and allowing thoughts to
lead me to, at least for me, new territory. This second part should annoy a few
souls and rile a few others, but that’s okay.

Tuesday, 20 November 2012

Concentration
is the last element of the Eightfold Path. Practising all of the eight factors
of the path pretty much guarantees us a powerful and transformative journey of
discovery, growth and change. If we go far enough down this path, it ought to
lead to some sort of liberation from suffering and confusion and awakening to
authentic being. This is what the label on the packet suggests, you will have
to make your own way and sample the goods to find out whether the claims are
true, or not.

The
Eightfold Path does not exist out there somewhere and I hope I have made that
clear to some degree in these blog posts. It cannot be perfected in any
absolute sense and there is no committee to measure your progress, and, most
likely, no one will pat you on the back and say well done if you make notable
progress on it, and, well, what is ‘it’ anyway?Many followers of Buddhism mistake the external forms, teachings and
practises as ‘the’ path. This is a mistake. The Eightfold Path is simply an
effective model to inspire, guide and prompt us to action that has been
reliable enough to warrant its survival and continued propagation for a couple
of thousand years. The path though is ‘our’ actual-personal-experience of
putting these practices and concepts into action. We need to start and gain
some first-hand experience before we can relate experientially to what is
alluded to in the many books out there. The path then is created through the
raw elements of our own actions, choices and intent. As we gain first-hand
experience we can start to relate to what teachers and teachings are hinting at
and decide for ourselves what works and what doesn't, whether a given teacher
or form of Buddhism has its head in a dark place, or if it/they might be worth
investing time and energy into. There are many Buddhisms out there and most of
them believe they have the final say on what Buddhism is. Outside of institutions
and organisations, authoritative figures, leaders and followers is the simple
matter of an individual, or a group exploring the consequences of dedicated practise
on this human life, in this time and place.

A
path that journeys into new territory is always going to provide surprises, the
unexpected and new experiences in unfamiliar surroundings. A one-to-one
teaching situation should support us in making our own way, rather than impose
a set of rules and instructions which we ought to adhere to religiously. In
such a dynamic, negotiation and exchange are a more useful relationship dynamic
than superior and subordinate roles. I personally have always preferred the
idea of spiritual friend to guru or master for this reason and been highly
suspicious of powerful, aloof, all-knowing men sat on high thrones. Institutionalised
Buddhism often has the most authoritative sounding say on Buddhist matters, but
to accept dogmatic, doctrinal view as the most authoritative would be a
mistake. Relying on impersonal, external authority to determine the validity of
your own first-hand experience in practise and in life is likely to lead to
blind faith, group think and a lack of self-authority and imagination. Negotiating
authority successfully entails levelling the field. The same seductive ease
which convinces individuals to vote for ‘strong leaders’ plays out in spiritual
communities.

The
path is your own personal-direct-firsthand experience of putting meditation and
new concepts into practise and exploring the results and consequences as they
evolve in an ongoing discipline. The rest is an add-on that may or may not help
you on your way. At the end of the day it is good to be able to trust yourself
to know what works for you and what doesn't, and stand on your own two
feet.It takes courage to do so, but it
is well worth it. It is certainly better than ending up in bed with a wrinkly, 70-year-old,guru…or maybe not, if that's your thing.

'Without sexual union, there would be no one born capable of experiencing the great bliss of enlightenment.'

(I highly recommend reading Part.1 first. Click here) Certainly my ideas about sexuality are limited and have been impacted by the same forces as any other, but in attempting to write this closer to the Buddhism Meet Shamanism series, which hasn’t been easy, I have come to the conclusion that two essential points are at the heart of anything useful I might have to share. They are;

1.Sex is perfectly natural

2.Freedom of sexual expression is something we must be willing to own and explore

These two points require explanation, so here goes. Being sexual and making love are perfectly natural expressions of our basic humanity. This simple statement means more than it might seem at first glance. Because our sexual aspect sits in the middle of the wheel, it is impacted enormously by our relationship with the other four aspects. This means that our relationship with ourselves as a sexual being is deeply affected and condition by; our ability to express our emotions and be intimate, our ability to be connected to our body and therefore to pleasure, our ability to be open and receptive to a partner and let go of separating thoughts, and the ability to connect in a deeply human, expansive and naturally creative manner. When we engage sexually we bring in our other four aspects and the richness of the experience, outside of simply ‘getting off’, is determined in great part by how capable we are of doing this.

Because most of us have issues and because most of us are blocked to some degree in our four aspects, our ability to experience open, natural sexuality and achieve depths of pleasure and connection that so many of us deeply desire, is limited and restricted. Add onto this the challenges and trials of relationships and we can start to see that sexuality and sex are often highly complicated arenas. This complication can lead us down avenues in our relationship to sexuality that are difficult to exit from.

Many of the preconceptions we have with regards to sex come to us from popular culture. One of the most obvious and heavily recycled is that romantic love and sex are ideally inseparable. This is a highly annoying idea that is certainly supported and backed up by the religious brigade and is repeated again and again by the modern day myth making industry of Hollywood and by most of the standard soap operas and TV series which still dominate our screens.

I for one have found eastern attitudes towards sex to be quite refreshing. The romanticisation of sex can be found all over the globe but in eastern countries, which have been much more successful at avoiding biblical definitions of what constitutes right sexual behaviour, much more pragmatic and freer attitudes towards sex can be found, especially in Tibet, Japan and China. Certainly in the West it is unlikely that a family doctor would prescribe twice-daily sex in order to heal a liver complaint as can happen in China. As John Stevens illustrates in great detail, in Tibet polygamy and polyandry were widely practised and in Japan the visiting of brothels was fairly typical and accepted behaviour by Zen priests. This is hardly something we would expect from Catholic priests in the West, or Imams in the Middle-East.

'It would seem by the size of your buttocks, that your nature is exceedingly lustful.' Drukpa Kunley, a revered Tibetan yogi and Mahamudra master

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About Me

I'm a Life Coach, Core Shamanic Counsellor and meditation teacher to boot. I also teach English in Trieste, Italy. I follow a non-traditional expression of Buddhism and also run occasional events over the border from Trieste in Slovenia on Shamanism. Email me if you're curious about any of these activities.

Benvenuti (welcome)

This blog started out as an experiment. It continues to be such to this day. The opinions you will find in these pages are my own, and like all material on this Earth, are subject to change due to that hidden factor of impermanence.

This blog started out as an experiment. Writing is an art and one which I am only now starting to develop any capacity in. All of my writing constitutes a learning process in the presentation of ideas, opinions and experience. I am no expert, but I am doing my best to develop and learn from each piece I publish.

This blog started out as an experiment. I've no idea where it will end up. I explore Buddhist and Shamanic themes in this blog. Both areas which interest a fairly small percentage of Western society. Therefore this blog is quite specialist. It goes one step further by not representing any particular tradition in either of these spiritual arenas, although I have grounding in two shamanic worlds; one a path, the other an approach to counselling. My experience of Buddhism is primarily within the Tibetan and Theravada traditions.